The brief letter sent by Attorney General William Barr to congressional leaders on Sunday afternoon summarizing Mueller's findings is a complicated document. In key respects, it contains very good news for President Trump about a scandal that has dogged his presidency since before he even took office. The determination of just how good the news is -- whether it amounts to the exoneration Trump claims on these points or whether we're dealing with conduct just shy of prosecutable -- will have to await the text of Mueller's report itself. But for those who quite reasonably demanded a serious investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election and of cooperation and coordination with it on the part of the Trump campaign, it has to be significant that Mueller, after the better part of two years of investigating, has not found that anyone associated with the Trump campaign knowingly conspired with Russia's efforts.

IOW, trust but verify. If Mueller's report truly does what Trump has claimed ("No Collusion, No Obstruction, Complete and Total EXONERATION. KEEP AMERICA GREAT!"), the President will have no problem releasing the full report; in fact, he will welcome such a release as will his supporters both in and out of Congress.

Long Answer: The private-state nature of corrupt criminal dictatorships like Putin's Russia confounds law enforcement the way hybrid war confounds traditional military response.

Putin uses his oligarchs as emissaries to corrupt, cultivate, and compromise foreign business people and politicians. But they aren't officially state actors. It's a mafia using a nation for cover.

So Trump's campaign manager sharing data with a Ukrainian loyal to the Kremlin or a billionaire crony of Putin isn't "conspiring with Russia" only in the most technical, least accurate sense.

This pattern has repeated all over. Loans to Western politicians & parties with Russian backing, millions in donations from private citizens. Technically very little of it is "Russia," but it's always Putin.twitter.com

Washington (CNN)Nearly a year before his letter Sunday telling lawmakers he did not believe President Donald Trump committed obstruction of justice, Attorney General William Barr authored a memo saying he thought the obstruction investigation was "fatally misconceived."

Barr, then a private citizen and former attorney general to President George H. W. Bush, issued the memo to senior Justice Department officials in June 2018.
Trump went on to nominate Barr to lead the Justice Department on a permanent basis after Trump fired Attorney General Jeff Sessions in early November. As CNN reported in December, Barr's June 8, 2018, memo offers a detailed analysis of one of the most consequential episodes of Trump's presidency, concluding that while he was "in the dark about many facts," special counsel Robert Mueller's obstruction inquiry was "fatally misconceived."